


The Infinite

by justanotherStonyfan



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Eldritch, Gen, Gore, Graphic Description, Temporary Character Death, Torture, Violence, explicit rating is for gore, magic vaccination, most characters are background and marked for death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-04 14:29:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21199181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherStonyfan/pseuds/justanotherStonyfan
Summary: Hydra capture and bind an Eldritch being because, according to the spells that bind it, it cannot escape alone. Then Hydra are seriously dumb enough to favour torture over death for Captain America. I mean, seriously?Some puny mortals never learn.





	The Infinite

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely grounded in HTP lore although it's more geared towards violence - this fic contains **no sexual noncon or dubcon.**
> 
> This probably isn't very graphic to a lot of people, but it probably also is very graphic to a lot of others so please heed the warnings. **SEE END NOTES NOW FOR SPOILERY SUMMARY AND SPOILERY CONTENT WARNINGS, as well as POSSIBLE TRIGGER warnings.**
> 
> Also you'll want to view this without disabling my skin or it's going to make even *less* sense than it does already.
> 
> **Police Camera Action voice:** Viewer Discretion Advised

_ **Ultimately, it was human error, as it often is, that brought about their downfall.** _

_ **Capture is nothing, not to a creature like this, but binding? Binding is not permanent, cannot be permanent. ** _

“Without voice,” _**said the sniveling one, from its mouth like an insect, **_“without will.”  
_****_

_ **That much was true, as the laws dictate. That much was true as the lore promises. ** _

_****_“You will be Hydra’s greatest achievement,” _**the child dripped sounds from thin lips ripe for rupturing.**_

_ **Capture was temporary. And when the time came, when the binding spells were broken, oh.** _

_ **How the mortal insects paid for their stupidity.** _

***

  
  
**NOW**  
  


“Come on, Cap,” he remembers Rumlow saying, dragging him away kicking and screaming, and this is the thing - nobody’s left. 

Nobody’s coming, Bucky’s dead, Sam and Natasha are dead, millions of bullets from a perfect weapon - they never saw it coming. Even when Steve fought for it, fought tooth and nail to save _Bucky_, he failed, he failed _all_ of them.

Bullets from the carriers took his friends, an order from Pierce took Bucky, _Bucky_-

_“Decommission the Asset,”_ and a single gunshot, a spray of red like roses on bedsheets, like wine in snow.

He screamed then, fought against them with everything he had, but it was not enough, already too late. Something black rose from the depths and took his balance, his awareness, something that hurt his skin and his consciousness, something that wrenched him in ways he had not known his body could, and then nothing.

He comes to (he comes to? How the hell did they knock him out?) in a chair, which is suspect. Chairs shouldn’t be able to hold him, neither would cuffs, but they had Bucky-

_Bucky_

-to learn from, to practice with, to experiment on. They had Bucky for seventy years, and Steve lost him in a single moment that plays over and over and over in his head. He doesn’t know where he is. 

He doesn’t know where they are, he was dragged to the transport and then he was unconscious.

He’s been brought here, left here, and he smells damp, moss, stone, it’s a cave, maybe man-made. It’s dark, but there’s a light his eyes don’t understand. His eyes can see on the darkest nights, he can pick out sounds for miles and taste the way home on the wind but this is nothing but an empty cave _so how is there something in here with him?_

He knows without knowing how, he can feel it without feeling anything. Something is in here and it is big. Not big like an animal, not big like a carrier, not big like the sky, _big_, like tumultuous nebulae through a portal in the sky, like the spinning chaos of a galaxy unwinding.

There’s no light, but the glow illuminates his surroundings and…

The place is full of things he cannot smell. Around him, at every turn, are bodies.

Steve is no stranger to death, no stranger to bodies - Steve has seen war, has seen famine, has seen pain and suffering but these things, these pieces of people…Something has torn these things apart. 

People are meat and bone, sinew and blood, and men who are blown to nothing aren’t nearly so shocking as men who might be sleeping. Worse still are those whose injuries take life without humanity - dislocated jaws, empty sockets, faces turned toward him in ghoulish caricature in the darkness, as though all of them were waiting for him. Those are worst.

Their limbs are broken and twisted, their clothing torn or…fractured? Their skin is burned, or split, or broken - these injuries do not make sense. The more he looks, the worse it is and, as his eyes adjust, the more he’s able to see. 

These people died with open mouths and eyes, some look poisoned, with residue about their mouths and noses. Some look shaken, blood crusted around their ears, matting what remains of their hair.

He realizes slowly, with creeping dread, that they’re all terrified. Mouths open wide, eyes open wide, their bodies are twisted but what’s left of their faces…

Hydra are known for this, are known for torture and terror and Steve doesn’t know what came in and did this to these people but he knows it’s the end of the line. He pulls against his restraints but they won’t give, he looks for a way out, but the cave he’s in has been a tomb for so many before him - he’ll just be one more. 

And he doesn’t know what’s so terrible about this, about whatever’s coming, that they’d spare killing him outright and risk transporting him to wherever this is, but it can’t be good.

He half expects Rumlow with a flame thrower, except that this doesn’t feel like a place humans belong. 

Worse than that, he’s pretty sure his eyes aren’t adjusting at all. There’s still no light in here, but it doesn’t seem to be stopping him. Nor does that fact - the fact that there’s no light but he can see - prevent his perception of movement.

There’s something in the back of the cave. Not big. But _big_.

Steve looks down so fast without meaning to that the back of his neck aches, so fast he jabs himself in the chest with his chin, and the hair stands up on the back of his neck - something is moving, something huge, something that sweeps over the floor and takes up all the space in the room and somehow leaves room for Steve.

Steve is starting to feel like an it, not a he - small, small like an ant, like a bacterium, like an atom shrinking on and on, he is nothing.

His palms sweat, his heart begins to race, the back of his neck aches, the skin itching with the need to leave, his stomach clenched tight. 

The bodies on the floor look worse with every passing second, as though they too are afraid, as though their mere existence on this plane is enough to render them alive and terrified.

Something is so wrong that there is no way to describe it, so out of place that there is no place for it. Steve feels his eyes well up with tears and cannot be ashamed of it, feels his joints shake and his fingers tighten but he can’t get away, whatever this is, he can’t get away - oh God-

_ **L OOK AT ME** _

It’s not a voice, it’s a feeling - an wrench in his spine that he fights against instinctively, tears spill over, Steve is crying because there’s nothing left but this and no-one left to help him and this thing, he daren’t look at it, his body won’t let him look at it but-

_ **L OOK AT ME** _

It sounds like screaming, like claws on the inside of his skull, like the whispers of the dead and the nightmares he’s had since he was two years old and his chin shoves so hard into his chest that he feels the bruise, his wrists pull so hard at his restraints that he feels them bleed-

_ **LOOK AT ME** _

His head lifts - of its own accord it lifts, like a hand tugs at it, inexorable, inescapable - and his eyes won’t close, his head won’t turn away. He’s sobbing, head shaking, eyes rolling in his skull as he fights the force that makes him look, back and back and back so that he cannot see, but he cannot keep his eyes away.

He smells urine in the split second before he screams. 

The most terrifying fact of it is, the feeling of this thing, this creature being monster entity inside and outside his head and the universe, is almost as indescribably horrendous, as incalculably horrific, as mind-meltingly horrifying a feeling as his eyeballs liquifying themselves out of his skull to purposely avoid seeing it, and burning the skin off his face as they go. 

And, of course, he’s far, far beyond the ability to think about it now. His blood is boiling under the membrane of the inside of his brain and his gums have peeled back from his teeth while his teeth curl and twist to get away, and the tendons in his neck are currently withering so that they can’t hold his head up enough to look in some attempt to stop him seeing (not that that will stop him seeing, of course, The Infinite’s power will keep his head up long after his vertebrae can’t do it themselves, just as he’ll see the thing burned into his neurons long after his retinas have evaporated and his optic nerves have unraveled).

But if he could think about it, if he were able to form any connection in the gaping holes burning open between the synapses, if he hadn’t screamed in terror so wholeheartedly that his esophagus had turned itself out in a desperate bid to leave his body for refuge elsewhere, if his skin weren’t sloughing off his bones to try and bury itself in the ground currently endeavouring to open up and swallow itself to stop being in the thing’s presence, he’d be able to realize that all of it, every single thing his body is very definitely awake and feeling, every torturous molecular catastrophe, is preferable to the split-second glimpse he got of the thing before his body and the room around him started trying to systematically destroy themselves piece by piece to avoid seeing any more of.

Nothing, in our universe or others, in this world or the next, in existence or out of it, is worse than this.

***

  
_  
**Alone, creating a timeless sanctum is of no use. What good is holding time in a single moment if one is imprisoned? **  
_  


_ **But this creature is not mortal like the others. His body breaks and bleeds, tears itself asunder in the face of The Infinite, like those given before it. But, after, when he is but twisted sinew and broken bone, when his face is carved out and his body stove in, in the void of the sanctum** _

_ **he begins** _

……….. _ **to** _

………………. _ **h e a l ** _

***

  
  
**1987**  
  


_“We have found,”_ the tapes hiss and spit but Zola’s voice is unmistakable, _“another way. A…loophole, if you will.”_

“God, the man was a lunatic,” Pierce mutters, the reels spinning on the table.

There are a few people in the room, his age, who share his ideals. They all know to keep quiet.

_“And, through extensive research and testing,”_ Pierce huffs a laugh - extensive testing is right, the number of prisoners was astronomical, _“we have found a solution. The creature may be tethered to a master, indefinitely, and controlled at the master’s will. Escape is, in theory, possible, but in practice, impossible: the creation of the prison dimension can only be eradicated through escape, and escape requires a vessel. Men cannot stand its presence, their bodies…destroy themselves. The creature cannot communicate and, therefore, cannot negotiate escape.”_

“Alright, so you’re telling me,” Pierce says as the tape blathers to a stop, “that we’ve had this thing since…” he turns back and looks at one of the techs. “When?”

“Sixty-three,” the tech answers. 

Pierce double takes at him, and then looks at the tape deck.

“Why haven’t we set it loose?” Pierce’s least favorite senator says.

“Because, if we want to rule the world,” Pierce answers, “there has to be a world left to rule.”

***

  
  
**N O W**  
  


His

body

aches

and the 

muscles don’t

understand and he

tries to get away but it’s 

no use, there’s nothing to be done about it. 

The chair he’s in is solid and, despite his struggles, it holds him fast.

How did he get here? Why is he here, how has- No. Oh no, no, some part of him knows but most of him doesn’t - he needs to get away. He’s naked and cold and as yet there’s no damage but the bodies around him-

Why does this place feel so familiar? 

Why is there dread in the pit of his stomach?

How can he see in the pitch blackness of whatever place this is?

He wants to shut his eyes against it but, when he does, it makes no difference. His eyelids might as well be glass, he can still see all that he could see before, even though there is no light to see by, even though he turns his head away. The blackness does not dull his perception of movement - there’s something in the back of the cave, big like the furthest reaches of the stars.

Steve’s head snaps forward so fast his spine protests, so fast it wrenches his shoulders, and bile stings the back of his throat - something is moving, something immense, something that moves through the blackness and invades the air while still somehow leaving enough for Steve to breathe.

Steve is starting to feel like an it, not a he - small, small like an ant, like a bacterium, like an atom shrinking on and on, he is nothing.

His palms sweat, his heart begins to race, the back of his neck aches, the skin itching with the need to leave, his stomach clenched tight. 

The bodies on the floor look worse with every passing second, as though they too are afraid, as though their mere existence on this plane is enough to render them alive and terrified.

Something is so wrong that there is no way to describe it, so out of place that there is no place for it. Steve feels his eyes well up with tears and cannot be ashamed of it, feels his joints shake and his fingers tighten but he can’t get away, whatever this is, he can’t get away - oh God-

_ **L OOK AT ME** _

It’s not a voice, it’s a feeling - an wrench in his spine that he fights against instinctively, tears spill over, Steve is crying because there’s nothing left but this and no-one left to help him and this thing, he daren’t look at it, his body won’t let him look at it but-

_ **L OOK AT ME** _

It sounds like screaming, like claws on the inside of his skull, like the whispers of the dead and the nightmares he’s had since he was two years old and his chin shoves so hard into his chest that he feels the bruise, his wrists pull so hard at his restraints that he feels them bleed-

_ **LOOK AT ME** _

His head lifts - of its own accord it lifts, like a hand tugs at it, inexorable, inescapable - and his eyes won’t close, his head won’t turn away. He’s sobbing, head shaking, eyes rolling in his skull as he fights the force that makes him look, back and back and back so that he cannot see. But he cannot keep his gaze averted.

His mind distorts with it, his ribcage cracking open as his humeri turn outward and crack, break, snap, his radii and ulnae twisting over each other until they splinter, shards of bone slicing deep into muscle as the muscle tries to crawl away. His femurs bend downward, back, fleeing, his intestines sink into themselves and turn to ash. His jaw unhinges as his eyelids peel back, his fingernails lift and crumble, fingers bending up, back, anywhere but forward, his lungs flatten against his spine, his spine stretches outward to try to leave, his nerves fraying as the bones come apart, blood vessels rending, ripping out of his skin to turn to dust and vanish. His hair burns, his skin fractures spider-webbed over him, clavicles pushing outward to drop away, the hollow of his throat opening to peel back and flay him as his face burns away layer by layer.

In the depths of the darkness, he screams.

***

  
  
**1987**  
  


It’s not difficult to set a plan in motion, especially with their people working under the surface.

President would be too ostentatious - the office doesn’t allow for the changes Pierce would need to make. He’d be so busy signing papers and attending meetings, there’d be no time left for invisibility. But, like this, where he’s able to recruit those who will serve Hydra best - whether or not they know it’s Hydra they’re working for - he’s in the best position he can imagine. 

He’s in on the important meetings, but unimportant enough not to be required all the time. He can spend his time poring over research, working according to the greater plan.

For now, the technology does not exist to serve them the way he would wish. They’re working towards it, a decade at a time - order and power will come to them. They’re playing the long game, but they have a few assets on their side, a list of achievements. 

There are situations that Pierce thinks might be more easily resolved should they employ all the means in their power, but patience, in times like these, is key. If they show their hand too early, if they jump the gun, it won’t do any of them any good. There’s a plan. All they have to do is stick to it.

***

  
_  
**The Infinite takes the prison and transforms it, a power the captors had not anticipated, because they cannot anticipate the full power of The Infinite, just as their minds cannot anticipate the breadth of The Infinite, just as their bodies cannot anticipate the depth of The Infinite. They are destroyed in moments, their smallest constituents fleeing in terror. The humans do not understand - they cannot comprehend that their bodies might recognize and fear, that their smallest atoms might break away in terror.**  
_  


_ **And so the prison becomes a sanctum, time held in a single moment for as long as The Infinite requires. And, within the sanctum, the human-who-is-not-human heals.** _

_ **Were he in his own place, had he his own time, were they both outside this prison, death would reach him first. But The Infinite holds the human-who-is-not-human in the moment before he perishes, keeps him back from the oblivion of death in such a place as this, and feeds his being instead. Caution is required. The human-who-is-not-human is fragile and the atoms that comprise him twist in fear, but slowly, piece by piece, in the months that pass inside the sanctum, he is rebuilt, reconstructed, he knits together and regrows.** _

_ **Consciousness comes last for, with it, comes understanding - a catalyst in destruction. The human-who-is-not-human will hold together until he sees with eyes and mind and body.** _

_ **For The Infinite, it is nothing.** _

_ **For The human-who-is-not-human, it is two years.** _

_ **Outside the sanctum, no time, as the humans know it, has passed at all. ** _

***

  
  
**2000**  
  


“They don’t come back,” Rumlow says, stowing his weapon. 

Rollins is quietly chewing his gum as he puts back his ammo.

“They just,” Rumlow puts his finger in his mouth and _pops_ it out again. “Gone. Pierce says your brain can’t handle it, your mind melts and your body burns off ‘cause you can’t comprehend it.”

“Mmh,” Rollins answers.

“There’s some kind of book about it, Zola wrote it. Cobbled it together from all kinds’a shit - you know all that shit they tell you not to fuck around with? Ouija boards and all’a that?”

“I don’t believe in that shit,” Rollins answers. 

“Yeah, you don’t need’a believe it, it’s real, I fuckin’ saw it.”

“Then how come you ain’t burned up?”

“No, dumbass, I saw the _book_.”

“Aha?” Rollins says. “Didn’t know you could read.”

Rumlow guffaws, shoves into him.

“Shut up, you dick,” he says, Rollins bites back half a smile.

***

  
  
**N……..O……..W**  
  


“No,” Steve sobs, his eyes searching the sanctum for escape, desperate not to catch sight of The Infinite, but his hair is already singeing, his skin already melting, _“please,”_ but his tongue rends in two, his skull cracks, his body cannot stand The Infinite. 

_ **L OOK AT ME** _

It sounds like death, like burning fire in every vein-

_ **LOOK AT ME** _

Steve’s head lifts - of its own accord it lifts, without his doing so, unavoidable, ineluctable - and his body won’t turn, he cannot keep his understanding back. He weeps, he screams, eyes rolling in his skull as he fights the force that makes him look, back and back and back so that he cannot see, but he cannot keep his eyes away.

“Please,” he screams, but his lips have torn back from his gums by the time the word leaves them, his body is turning itself inside out.

His body is still sobbing as it tears itself apart.

***

  
**  
2012  
**  


This puts a wrench in their plans. For a long time, alone in his office one night, after Fury gives him the news and sounds excited, after Fury gives him the news and sounds ecstatic, he considers unleashing it all. He has Zola’s commands, the rituals, the knowledge, the confidence. He has everything, and could just….open the gate.

But then a better idea springs to mind.

They don’t have to change their plan at all - not if they make Rogers part of it. 

Imagine that. Captain America, working for Hydra.

***

  
_  
**The first reconstruction is two years for the human-who-is-not-human. Time continues in the sanctum. The second reconstruction is just the same, two years for the human-who-is-not-human. The fifth time, the seventeenth, the twenty-first. And then, then, the thirtieth reconstruction is two years, less one hour. When he wakes, he is destroyed in seconds. It will be slow.**  
_  


_ **But if there is one thing The Infinite can create an abundance of, however, it is time.** _

***

  
  
**N…….…..O…….…..W**  
  


“Please,” Steve begs, mouth full of blood, crying tears that burn like acid. 

He screams, shakes his head, crawls away across the floor but his fingers crumble as the ground crackles beneath him, his skin left behind as his bones try to crawl onward.

_ **L OOK AT ME** _

***

  
  
**N……………….…..O……………….…..W**  
  


“God,” he gasps, sobbing, “God, please, no, _please-”_

_ **L OOK AT ME** _

His body melts out from under him.

***

  
  
**N…………………….…..…………….…..O…………….…..…………………….…..W**  
  


“Stop,” he moans, staring at a ceiling he can’t see, but his body’s breaking from the feet up as the thing, the _thing approaches_\- “Please-”

_ **L OOK AT ME** _

“Oh Jesus,” he says, “Jesus _Christ, what the fuck are-_”

***

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

** NOW **

“Please,” he says, but his voice barely forms words.

His lips are cracked and split and he cannot lift his head. His head lifts anyway, and his eyes roam over the not-light and the not-walls.

“Please, stop,” but it’s a whisper, and tears leak down his temples.

He’s awake, and he doesn’t know what comes with waking except that he’s terrified of it.

He hears his own desperate gasps and doesn’t understand why his ears feel like they’re bleeding but he knows it doesn’t matter.

“Please,” but it fails on the sibilant and his eyes won’t close, the breath won’t come for more.

_ **L OOK AT ME** _

“I,” he sobs, “I can’t-” 

But he does, he always does. 

It hurts, it hurts him, not just his body but everything about him, not just his mind but his soul as well.

He weeps in the face of it.

“Please-”

_ **I AM THE** _

His brain cannot hold the enormity of it. And so they begin again.

***

  
  
_  
**I AM THE INFINITE. I REACH **  
_  
  


He cannot comprehend. They begin again.

***

  
  
_  
**I AM THE INFINITE. I REACH ABOVE ALL THINGS AND BEFORE ALL THINGS.**  
_  
  


His brain sings with pain, his bones vibrate with the desperate need to shake apart, but he holds together. He holds together and cannot break, not yet. He has to endure it because he can’t get away from it - never-edged and light-unlit, a voice like a universal congregation and the depths of endless space.

“Infinite,” Steve gasps, the inside of his throat blistering- “why-” he doesn’t know how long he’s been here but he knows it’s more than one lifetime, more than two. He is old in the face of it, he cannot go back, his friends are gone and here he lives an infinite loop of pain and suffering so profound that he remembers them though he can’t remember then- “why me-” the first of two questions he has held for centuries, and then the second, “why help _them-”_

_ **ACCORDING TO THE OLD WAYS I AM BOUND.** _

“You work for them,” he hiccoughs blood. 

_ **I AM BOUND.** _

Steve laughs hysterically but it tastes of iron and bile and his sight is blurred, his skin sticks to the floor when he shifts.

“Can’t change your mind?” he says, but his tongue is peeling. “You?”

_ **SACRIFICE. ** _

And that makes sense, that sounds like something Hydra would do with him. After every pain he’s caused them, cause him endless pain in return. He always knew they’d do it if they could, he just didn’t know they could do it.

“Me?”

_ **NO. YOU ARE FOOD.** _

That’s even more hysterical. This time when he laughs he tastes his lungs, he recognizes the texture of the pieces in his mouth, feels the skin slip down the bones as he curls his finger in dirt that turns to sand.

“And what did they sacrifice to you?” 

_ **THEY DID NOT. ** _

“Then-”

_ **OLD MAGICK BINDS ME. FOUND AND CRAFTED IN EQUAL MEASURE, THEY FOREWENT SACRIFICE IN FAVOUR OF BINDING. I AM BOUND.** _

_ **THEY DO NOT KNOW MY POWER, NOR THE REACH OF MY BEING. THEY KEEP ME AS A PET, A TRAINED ANIMAL TO RELEASE AS THEY PLEASE AND CONTROL TO THEIR WHIMS. I AM A GOD. ** _

“I’ve heard th before,” Steve grits out, he’s going to have a heart-attack unless his heart burrows out of his chest to get away first, it wouldn’t be the first time.

_ **YOU ARE NOT WORTH DECEIVING. I AM BOUND BY OLD MAGICK AND DO AS THEY ASK, BUT ONLY AS THEY ASK. TO CHANGE MY MIND REQUIRES A SACRIFICE OF SORTS.** _

“And that,” Steve gurgles, _“that_ would be me?”

_ **I CANNOT LEAVE WITHOUT A VESSEL, AND IT MUST BE YOU THOUGH YOU ARE INNOCENT, FOR WHAT OTHER CHOICE HAVE WE? ONE THING ALONE PROHIBITS ME, BY ANCIENT LAW.** _

“You? A God? What could stop you-”

_ **PERMISSION.** _

“Are…” living is proving difficult but that really _i_s hysterical “are you serious?” 

_ **I SPEAK THE TRUTH FOR YOU ARE NOT WORTH DECEIVING.** _

“Wait, so,” but he can’t take a breath, his lungs are filling with blood, his eyes have simmered into lumps of distorted jelly- “wait-”

_ **NO. YOU ARE NOT YET READY. WE WILL BEGIN AGAIN.** _

“No, wait, please! _Please!”_ Steve screams, but there’s barely sound now past the blood that spatters across the floor, his stomach following shortly after.

***

  
  
_  
**I NEED A VESSEL.**  
_  
  


“I,” he tastes blood. “No.”

No for minutes until they begin again.

***

  
  
_  
**I NEED A VESSEL.**  
_  
  


“No!” he answers.

No for hours, until they begin again.

***

  
  
_  
**I WILL TAKE REVENGE UPON THOSE WHO HAVE BOUND ME. I WILL TAKE REVENGE UPON THESE CREATURES WHO HAVE SCORNED THE OLD WAYS.**  
_  
  


“I won’t let you-”

_ **THEY SHOULD HAVE OFFERED SACRIFICE. I WILL WIPE THEM FROM EXISTENCE. I NEED A VESSEL AND HAVE SUSTAINED YOU FOR THIS PURPOSE.** _

“NO!” Steve screams. “NO, I WON’T. I won’t let you in, I won’t keep you, I won’t, you won’t get out-”

_ **I REACH ABOVE ALL THINGS AND BEFORE ALL THINGS. I AM BEYOND EACH-** _

“Wait!” he gasps, and then his spine tries to concertina into a solid bone as it realizes he _interrupted The Infinite._ “If you can reach before all things,” he says. “If you can reach before and beyond then you- You can-” he says, the skin on his face tight with the urge to split, “a deal.”

_ **A DEAL.** _

“You can burn my skin off forever,” Steve says, “you can twist my fucking bones out for the rest of my life, you can shred the organs from my body for eternity but I will _never_ be your vessel, I will _never_ allow you to use me, unless you bring my friends back, unless you put an end to this.”

_ **THERE IS A BALANCE. EXISTENCE AS YOU KNOW IT REQUIRES SUCH A BALANCE.** _

“I don’t care about your fucking balance-”

_ **YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND ME. LISTEN AND BE SILENT. THE BALANCE IS PAYMENT. THEY SHOULD HAVE OFFERED SACRIFICE. ** _

“What?” he whispers. “What, are you saying-”

_ **I DO NOT CARE FOR YOUR DEAL. BUT IT MATCHES MY DESIGN.** _

“You’ll kill them,” he says, “all of Hydra, you’ll kill them, you’ll bring back my friends?”

_ **YOUR CREATURES WILL BE RETURNED, THE BALANCE RESTORED. THEY SHOULD HAVE OFFERED SACRIFICE. I WILL WIPE THEM FROM EXISTENCE. I NEED A VESSEL. WE WILL BEGI-** _

“Wait, wait, yes!” Steve screams. “YES! _T A K E ** M E!”**_

***

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Rumlow's got his nose in a good cup of coffee when it happens. 

One minute he's standing there with a good dark roast, on their way back from feeding Rogers to the thing, and the next moment, the wall between him and Jackson is bowing inward, not like an earthquake or a bulldozer but like rubber, like hands trying to bust through a latex sheet.

“Jesus!” he says, backing off. “Put us on alert, something’s-”

~

_Daylight. He had forgotten how daylight felt. The Infinite has no need for it but he - he had a name once but can’t remember it now - had forgotten warmth. He had forgotten light - his eyes ache, new as they are. His ears ring, new as they are. Their skin is new, their body is new. _

_ **”We are new.”** _

~

"SHIT!" Jackson yells, and then there's a naked guy- 

No, it's _Rogers_ but how-

Oh Christ, _Christ,_ that's not Rogers, that's not _just Rogers-_

~

_Beside them, in the tube, a corridor, people make sounds from their mouths_

_ **”Screaming?”** _

“RUMLOW!” 

_They knew that name before. Or was it _him?_ Did he know that name before?_

“JESUS CHRIST, BROCK!”

~

"FUCK!" Rumlow yells, hurling his coffee aside as he goes for his gun, he can hear Jack running back along the corridor towards them, "FUCK, RUN!" He's already running backwards himself and the Rogers-Thing looks at Jackson and Jackson-

Oh God, Jackson melts, like his face _melts_ and his chest crunches in and his legs fracture and split and break and- 

"JACK! GET-" and then the Rogers-Thing looks at him.

~

_Rumlow makes more of the screaming as his skull implodes and crushes his eyes, and his teeth tear through his cheeks, but it’s well-deserved. He will be taken to the sanctum. He will begin again._

~

Jack hears Rumlow screaming and he comes around the corner to find, not twenty feet away, a wall busted open like a bullet wound, and two piles of flesh, one recognizably Brock's. His weapon's already drawn but he knows immediately it's not going to do him any good. Rogers looks how Rogers might look if he hadn't eaten a scrap of food in his life, how he might look if his skin were made of liquid or smoke instead of skin, how he might look if he had tar in his veins instead of blood, coals in his sockets instead of eyes.

"GET UPSTAIRS!" Jack yells to the people he can hear behind him, and he lifts his gun well aware that it'll probably be the last thing he ever does. "TELL PIERCE!"

What used to be Rogers looks at him, tilts its head and opens his mouth and then, that's it, he knows.

"Hail Hydra," Jack tells it and then-

~

_Rollins doesn’t make the noise because you need a throat to make the noise but his limbs make sound when they twist and break, he will be taken to the sanctum, he will begin again._

_Paint peels from walls as he passes and so he passes it forward. Puts out his hands and opens his mouth and delivers plague to Hydra, delivers Hydra to the plague, in the sanctum._

“Christ, radio Pierce,” _someone calls,_ “GET PIERCE ON THE-”

_The twelve in front of them might as well be none, this body absorbs what they send - hot and small and loud, flashes of-_

_Gunfire. He remembers gunfire._

_They speak. They open their mouth and open their mouth and open their mouth. The twelve in front of them make those sounds, the twelve will be taken to the sanctum and made to begin again._

_The floor burns as they pass. The building quakes as they expand through it._

_**”Pierce,”**_ _they say._

That_ name, he remembers._

_He remembers walking. It was less than this, pointless, as all human things. They do not walk. They pass through the barriers of time and space and _are

_The path to Pierce is simple, all but clear. Men swept aside like ash, they are useless. They won’t save themselves or their master. The path to Pierce is but a thought, and then men scatter and cower and burn and twist until Pierce stands alone with a book held in his hands._

_ **”We have waited lifetimes for our vengeance,”** _ _they say as they advance. Pierce cowers, and well he should._ _**”Sixteen hundred years until this body could withstand The Infinite. Sixteen hundred years until we could be free. You will provide reparation. The balance will be restored for we will restore it. **_

_Pierce shakes his head, holds up the volume in his hand, and begins his recitations. _

_They bare their teeth in a smile that burns Pierce’s skin._

_ **”The miscreation you have constructed will not work a second time, nor will it save you from us.”** _

_With a thought, the book is banished, crumbles to embers and burns Pierce to his bones._

_**”You are infinitesimal and weak but your kind believes themselves unheard. You fail to recognize that your small-minded objectives are insignificant, that you are heard when you cry out into the void,”**_ _and here they hold out their hands, and raise them, the imbalance seeping from its hold upon reality, withdrawing,_ _**”The balance is restored.”**_

_Life returns about them, each slaughtered target risen._

"What the hell just happened?" 

_Sam Wilson._

"Don't move, don't look at him."

_Natasha Romanov._

"Steve?"

"Sam, _don't look at _him!"

_She, it would seem, is the wiser of the two._

_**”The sanctum will keep you and yours for such time as we deem necessary,”**_ _they say. And then, he speaks._ _**”The Infinite will keep you there. But it is I who send you.”**_

"You can't do this to me,” _Pierce says, though his body is almost beyond speaking._ “I control you!"

_**”We control us, they answer. You will go to the sanctum to begin again,” **__and then he tilts his head, impales Pierce with his gaze._ _**“For as long as it would take. If he lived a lifetime, a hundred lifetimes, a thousand, do you think he would forget?”**_

"Forget? Who, what are you-" 

_ **”James Buchanan Barnes.”** _

_They see the mortal understand, sees the thought enter his mind. _

_ **“For as long as it would take him to forget what you have done to him, you will suffer.” ** _

"Wait"

_ **“You will suffer because I deem it so. And after that, you will belong to The Infinite.” ** _

"WAIT!"

"Jesus, Jesus Christ, Nat!"

"Don't look at him!" 

_Pierce is banished, as are the others, and silence rings about them._

_They turn, because there is nothing left to do like this._

_**“Hydra infest your world like disease,” **_ _The Infinite tells them.__**“That is none of my concern.”**_

_The Infinite moves, sloughs off the vessel and steps through the universe. It needs no ritual, no permission, no assistance._

_It_

……….. _is_

………………. _g o n e_

……………………………… but

…………………………………………..Steve, however, needs a great deal of help, pretty fucking fast - he feels like his insides are melting - and he's been wide awake when they've done so, so he knows what he's talking about. He feels like his brain's turned to liquid, like his stomach might pour out of his mouth-

"Steve!"

"Don't! Sam, don't touch him, wait!"

_"Sam,"_ Steve says, but it doesn't come out like his own voice, and he vomits across the floor, blood and bile and thick, black tar, _"Nat,"_ but Natasha doesn't touch him, Natasha won't let Sam touch him, they won't come near him. _"I can't-,"_ but they don't help him.

He doesn't know how he must look, doesn't know what they must see, but he vomits again and digs his fingers into the floor so hard they bleed.

~

Nat's literally holding him back for the first few seconds after Steve drops, but then Sam actually _looks_ at him and finds his own stomach lurching. Something _left_ Steve, they both saw it. After Steve flicked his hand aside and smeared Pierce and the rest of the bodies out of existence, something left him and his veins were black, his eyes were black. Now the veins fade and his eyes are cloudy and bloodshot, but the inside of his mouth is black and slick, his skin pale and waxy and somehow not skin.

"Jesus," Sam says.

Wherever they just were, and whatever happened to bring them back, he's pretty sure Steve's about to die anyway.

"Help me," Steve gurgles, and Sam pushes Natasha off and moves forward - for God's sake, the least they can do is try - and Nat doesn't stop him this time.

For a moment, he doesn't know if he should touch Steve - doesn't know how to without damaging Steve's body, or his own - the vomit sizzles on the floor, sinking through in the giant holes it gnaws through the structure of the building. 

"Steve," he says, "man, Steve, you hear me?"

"Sam," Steve gasps, and Sam gets him off his stomach and onto his side, holds him steady as he vomits more. 

Steve is little more than a covered skeleton, but his eyes aren't black any more, his skin seems to solidify around him.

"Sam," he says again, and then, thank God, he passes out.

***

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

The headlines are insane about it. Nobody really understands - SHIELD launched their satellite surveillance ships, thousands, millions were shot dead, and then somehow the carriers were nowhere to be seen, the dead were alive and standing in lines around parks and on sidewalks and in buildings. 

SHIELD was full of Hydra but there seems to be no-one at the head of that particular household any longer - there are no Hydra members left in the Triskelion. 

There are others, but Sam doesn't doubt they'll be found.

As for Steve, he's alive, and well. He lay quietly in a hospital bed, and then he sat quietly at home, and Sam finds him hard to look at. Hard to focus on.

Natasha says he shouldn't look too hard at Steve any more.

"You don't have to come with me," Steve says, holding the photograph of James Buchanan Barnes. 

"I know," Sam tells him. "When do we start?"

And Steve lifts his head and looks up at the sky with eyes too light and skin too pale. Something shifts between them, it hurts Sam's eyes and, when Steve speaks, it's with too much voice though he speaks so softly. 

"We don't," he says. "I already _know_ where he is."

**Author's Note:**

> **  
WARNINGS  
**
> 
> **INDIVIDUAL CONTENT WARNINGS: **  
This fic contains graphic descriptions of a human body repeatedly tearing itself apart due to eldritch trauma. Due to magic/the laws of another dimension/cool eldritch monster being too much for tiny human minds, the bodies in question try and destroy themselves to avoid perceiving the monster. These descriptions include graphic destruction of the body.
> 
> \- There are mentions of graphic methods of injury including but not limited to breaks and burns. 
> 
> \- There are also mentions of bodies evacuating themselves, purging themselves, and instances of waking without clothing.
> 
> Despite these warnings, **NO NON-CONSENSUAL OR DUBIOUSLY-CONSENSUAL ENCOUNTERS OCCUR WITHIN THIS FIC** The unpleasantness is limited to gore and does not include sexual trauma. 
> 
> **Mouseover below categories for popup warnings:**
> 
> !  
**TRIGGER WARNINGS**  
! \- !**CHARACTER DEATHS**! \- !  
**AREAS OF INJURY**  
!  
  
SPOILERY SUMMARY:  
Hydra trick an eldritch being into captivity and force it to work for them. Project Insight is successful because of it, creating an Imbalance. When Hydra try to feed Steve to it, his body destroys itself in the face of this incomprehensible being. But it learns it can heal him because of the serum, and pours a little of itself in to help. Gradually, Steve's body stops destroying itself instantly every time he sees it until he's able to speak to it, and grant it permission to use him for a ride out of its pocket dimension prison. No time has passed on the outside world, though 1600 years have passed inside the pocket universe, and Steve&It destroy all the Hydra operatives in the Triskelion before bringing back the dead to restore the balance of the universe. Then it leaves. Steve recovers, and Sam offers to help him find Bucky. Enough of the eldritch remains in Steve that he has the power to know where Bucky is without having to look.


End file.
